- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Satire
Dear Essendon,
I hope this letter finds you well.
It has recently come to my attention, thanks to our mutual acquaintance Robbo, that you are once again considering hiring James Hird as your new senior coach for 2023.
Naturally, I have written with the utmost urgency a vital message, on behalf of all 17 other AFL clubs and their supporters:
Do it. Please.
There is no telling what you might achieve by reuniting the Hird-Kevin Sheedy pairing of the 1990s and 2000s, with the former now a high-profile board member (I only mention this because given the upheaval at your club of late, you’d be forgiven for having forgotten exactly who’s still on the payroll).
Why, with ‘Hirdy’s’ footy wit and Sheedy’s tactical mastery, you could forge a Bombers outfit that would be the envy of all other teams from 1996.
Don’t let the fact that it’s 26 years later and the game has fundamentally changed put you off – you’ll show them all off when you destroy Fitzroy in Round 1 next year, and finish top of the ladder and await a first-week final against whoever finishes eighth.
Hird is clearly the best option to take on the reins of such a proud club, and fits your bill perfectly. You want an experienced coach? Well, you won’t find many who have seen more and done more than James Hird.
What other coach could claim to have overseen a program that, through either incompetence or ignorance or both, ran his club into the ground? What other coach could boast his incredible unprecedented record of winning nearly as many games as he lost?
A man who led his charges into ruins is surely the perfect man to help set things right again. That, after all, was the message of the wildly popular and critically acclaimed eighth season of Game of Thrones, where King Bran names Tyrion Lannister his Hand of the King despite years of incompetence and poor advice under the previous monarch. If such thinking was encouraged in such a well-thought-out masterpiece, it only makes sense to apply the same logic to AFL coaching.
What’s more, what other coach could, having been sacked following two 100-point losses in seven weeks and an incredible winning record of nearly 10 per cent in his final 11 games in charge, have done more than Hird has to prove worthy of a second chance?
His incredible four-month stint as an assistant coach at GWS saw that team achieve incredible heights, and only some unlucky losses in the last rounds stopped them from cracking the top 15.
As we all know, a man of Hird’s calibre could easily achieve just the same learnings and reflections from four months as an assistant that Michael Voss could glean from eight years. After all, what did Vossy ever achieve in the game?
James Hird as Essendon coach during the 2015 AFL season. (Photo by Scott Barbour/Getty Images)
And has Adem Yze ever coached a final? Of course not! You just can’t buy that September experience that Hird brings to the table, and the fact that they both have an equal number of finals wins doesn’t dampen that in the least.
I have no doubt that the taste of September Hird gleaned with a narrow 62-point loss to Carlton in an elimination final 11 years ago, that really could have been won but for some very poor umpiring, still burns in the belly of the one Essendon player still on the list from that match. No doubt Dyson Heppell has devoted his career to this moment, and the chance to make amends.
But forget yourselves for just a second – I know, I know, it’s hard sometimes – and think of what appointing Hird would mean for others.
For starters, your legion of nuffy fans who still pray to a shrine of Hird at night and long for the return of the glory days and the old values, the fans which most other teams have pushed to the periphery but still seem to be calling most of the shots at your mob, will cheer.
But those cheers will pale in comparison to the incredible joy you signing Hird would spread across the entire AFL world.
It’s difficult to put into words just what you deciding to head back to the well would mean for literally everyone.
Everywhere you’d look, from teams like North Melbourne coming off back-to-back wooden spoons, across the Nullarbor to West Coast coming off their worst season in their history, and even up north to the Giants as they suffocate under the weight of their own salary cap; from all four corners of the country, clubs everywhere will band together and proclaim as one ‘Oh well, at least we’re not Essendon’.
Few teams in history have ever had such an opportunity to spread universal, unadulterated joy throughout a community. Get Hird back in as coach, and the football world will celebrate. At your expense, sure, but what an altruistic thing to do!
Any wrongs you committed to Ben Rutten’s memory by unceremoniously punting him out the door in an ill-fated pursuit of Alastair Clarkson would be instantly forgiven, such would be the glee your new coach would bring to us fans. All the sins of the past would instantly wash away – the entire seventeen thousand years of the drugs saga, all the trillions of dollars guzzled up by lawyers and defence fees and that weird ‘Say that again’ interview Dean Robinson did with Luke Darcy, would all have been worth it after all.
Former Essendon coach and superstar James Hird. (Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)
You might be thinking at this point that it isn’t the Bombers’ job to serve the best needs of the AFL community. Pah, I say! Balance requires a powerful Victorian team take its turn as the league’s resident laughing stock, lest the universe collapse and chaos reign.
Richmond selfishly turned its back on this noble pursuit after decades of public service, from missing the finals for 12 years, to repeatedly finishing ninth, and then making the finals and losing it to the team that finished ninth that year.
Turning their back from that path just when they were on the cusp of the Nirvana of football comedy by acquiescing to the ‘Focus on Footy’ board handover, and their disgraceful selfishness in vowing to become a competently run football club quite frankly taints their three premierships and the zillion members that have since come out of the woodwork.
How fitting would it be for a team so heavily involved with helping the Tigers forge their own joker tag, by being the team kicked out of the finals in 2013 to allow the ninth-placed Carlton in to knock them over, to take their place on the comedy throne after lying bare for five years?
So on behalf of literally everyone, I implore you Essendon: don’t tease us with this tantalising news that you’re including James Hird as part of your ‘coaching process’. You don’t need a series of stages, detailed analysis and an exhaustive, weeks-long program – the solution is staring you right in the face.
The footballing world has gathered in a meeting, and after a thorough sixteen-second period of deliberation, deemed it the right decision to make for your club’s standing in the game, and the game as a whole.
If there is anything I or any of us can do to assist with this process, please let us know. We’ll do literally anything to make this a reality.
Yours sincerely,
Everyone
Who’s in your ultimate team? Pick the best team and compete with other fans for daily prizes on Draftstars. For the best odds on the game try out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Think. Is this a bet you really want to place? Set a deposit limit.